The Omen Machine

Nicci held a finger up right in front of his face. “You listen to me, Richard Rahl. You stay away from Hedge Maids. Do you understand me? Stay away. You have no defense against a Hedge Maid. None of us do. You stay away from her. Their magic is different than any of ours. Not even your sword would protect you from them.”

“You mean she might try to do us harm?”

“Hedge Maids are vipers. If you leave them lie under their rock they’re not likely to bother you, but if you go poking at them in their hidey-hole they’ll come out and kill you in a heartbeat. Hedge Maids deal in occult powers. Stay away from her. Do you hear me?”

“Well I don’t know that—”

“It would be best if you never breathed her name again.” Nicci shoved him against the wall again to make her point. “Do you understand me!”

Richard rubbed the back of his head where it had smacked the wall. “No, not really. What’s a Hedge Maid?”

Nicci let her hand drop. Her eyes went out of focus as she stared off.

“A Hedge Maid is an evil, nasty, dirty, wicked, foul, vile being, an oracle who trades in the darkest kinds of suffering and depravity. Everything they do revolves around death.”

“How do you know this Jit?”

“I don’t. But I know all too well what a Hedge Maid is.”

“And how do you know what they are?”

Her blue eyes cooled as they turned up to focus on his face. Her deadly words came in little more than a whisper. “Do you forget so easily that I was once a Sister of the Dark? Do you forget that I was once committed to the Keeper of the underworld? Do you forget that I was once Death’s Mistress?”

CHAPTER 16

How’s your hand?” Richard asked.

Kahlan turned from peeking out around the edge of the drapes where she had been watching the storm rage. It was so black outside that she could see only small patches near the light coming from some of the windows that looked out on the vast palace complex. The windows higher up on walls and in towers looked like dots of lights floating in midair, assailed by sideways slashes of snow.

She could see that the blizzard had piled up huge drifts of the wet, heavy snow. At times the snow turned to sleet, only to once more shift the world back to white chaos.

She lifted her hand out to Richard, holding it under the light of the lamp on the bedside table. The scratches left by the boy had turned to an angry red. It hurt a little but she didn’t want to say so. Where she was concerned, Richard was a dedicated worrier; she didn’t need to stoke those fires.

He took her hand and inspected it in the lamplight. He let out a grumbling noise. “It looks swollen.”

“It’s a little red,” she said, taking the hand back, “but I don’t think it’s doing too badly. It’s normal for scratches to get this way as they heal. How about yours?”

He lifted his hand to show her. “Mine looks about the same. I don’t think they look any worse than can be expected.”

“Not the worst problem of the day.”

“Not by a long shot,” Richard agreed.

He went to one of the cabinets to look for something. He finally pulled out his pack.

Kahlan smiled. “I haven’t seen that for a while.”

“It has been a while since we traveled anywhere. Maybe we should. Zedd wants us to visit him when he returns to the Keep.”

“I would like to see Aydindril and spend some time at the Confessors’ Palace again. It would be good to see the city doing well after all it’s been through.”

But she knew that they would not be going to Aydindril to see the Wizard’s Keep or the Confessors’ Palace anytime soon. Innocent people were dying. What ever the cause, Kahlan could feel in the pit of her stomach that it was going to overshadow everything else. She wanted to scream against the unseen darkness that was descending on them, but that would do no good.

Richard closed the cabinet door. “With all that’s going on I don’t know that Zedd is going to want to be returning to the Keep before we figure out what’s happening and get it resolved. I’m glad we have him here to help us.”

Kahlan watched as Richard lifted the baldric over his head and then propped his sword against the bedside table. He set his pack on the bed and started rooting around inside. She couldn’t imagine what he was looking for. With a smile he at last brought up a small tin. It made her smile, too, seeing it again.

He gestured to the edge of the bed. “Come and sit.”

As she did, Richard dabbed his finger in the tin and then lifted her hand. He gently smoothed some of the herb salve along the scratches. It felt cool and immediately started to quell the ache.

“Better?”

“Better,” she said with a smile.

It had been years since she had seen that tin of healing cream that Richard had made from aum, among other things. Having grown up in the woods, he knew about plants and how to make cures from them. After he spread some of the ointment on his own red scratches, he replaced the tin in his pack.